Professor Liang Yong 'an of Fudan University opened a love class. In the class, he put forward all kinds of dilemmas of young people's love in modern society, which finally came down to one point: love is getting harder and harder.
In the face of love, our hearts always seem to be full of thoughts and weeds. We can say goodbye easily, but we can't love each other for a long time. Is it because we can't "love"
In fact, as early as 65 years ago, there was a big discussion on this issue, and this discussion was triggered by a book, which is Fromm's The Art of Love.
In this book, Fromm systematically explains what love is, why love is an art, what to learn and how to practice the ability of love.
These interpretations triggered an unprecedented shock in the field of psychology at that time, aroused people's concern about love and conducted a lot of research and discussion on love. The scale is immeasurable today.
Who's Fromm?
Fromm was born in a Jewish family in France from 65438 to 0900. He experienced two world wars and five love affairs. All his life, he revised Freud's psychoanalytic theory to adapt to the western mental situation after the two world wars. He is regarded as one of the founders of psychoanalytic sociology.
At the age of 56, he wrote The Art of Love. At that time, he experienced many wars and vicissitudes. At the age of approaching the flower, he finally combined the theory of love with the practice of love.
You may think that "love" can analyze so much?
Yes, love is an eternal theme in our life, an eternal and unavoidable topic in life. This happens all the time. Among us, some people are in love, some are about to love, some are talking about love and waiting for love.
But it is undeniable that many of us may really don't know what love is and how to love it.
We know nothing about the deep meaning and internal logic of love. It seems that love is just an innate instinct of human beings, and we don't need to learn. But in fact, love is an ability that needs us to study hard.
As Fromm said: Love is an art, and people should learn to love.
Next, we walk into Fromm's art of love with expectation, longing, doubt and confusion, and learn how to love, so that each of us can benefit for life and get happiness.
At the beginning of this book, 0 1 fromm asks the question: Is love an art?
In our initial understanding, love seems to be somewhat mysterious. It is like an instinct of the body, more like a refreshing feeling. We don't know where it came from or how it disappeared.
So many people often say three words when looking for someone: "Look at the feeling".
Is "seeing feelings" reliable? Fromm thinks it's unreliable.
He firmly believes that love is an art, and since it is an art, there are rules to be found, methods to follow, and feelings to be sure, which can neither be learned nor learned.
Many people can't see this, so they often stumble in love, fail regularly, change countless lovers, and still struggle in endless love.
However, some people can grow up in love, meet someone and get happiness all their lives. This difference is related to luck, but more importantly, it depends on the ability to love.
The ability to know love is the premise for us to learn to love. Let's start with the origin of love.
Maybe you will say that love is only for carrying on the family line, and love is just a reproductive impulse wrapped in chocolate and roses.
Is that really the case?
Fromm believes that the fundamental point of human existence is that man transcends the animal kingdom, transcends the instinctive adaptability, and is divorced from nature, which leads to his loneliness and isolation.
Therefore, the eternal task of human beings is to get rid of this loneliness and realize the combination of people in love. This is the strongest desire in human hearts and the best way to get rid of loneliness.
The so-called love can be understood as:
As an independent individual, everyone is looking for another independent individual in the vast sea of people in order to achieve unity and get rid of loneliness.
The reality is that many people don't really know what love is, and they don't have the ability to know love, which leads to a lot of confusion.
For example, a girl said, I'm unlucky. I am always in trouble with people. I'm like a love rat harvester.
Such girls generally take it for granted that love is simple and the most important thing is to meet a good lover. If love fails, it must be the fault of the lover. They don't realize that the problem of love is essentially a problem of ability, not an object.
Without the ability to love, even if you meet more people, love will mostly end in failure.
For another example, some men complain: I am handsome and rich, with a high degree and a good job. Girls should all like me, but why can't I meet true love?
This is because people always think that love means being loved.
In order to be loved, men try their best to have power, status and wealth; Women try their best to lose weight and beauty to keep themselves sexy and charming.
We are eager for love, and always put achievement, reputation and status above love.
However, the fact is that getting a mature love is not determined by external conditions. If you fall into this misunderstanding, people are likely to turn a blind eye to the ability of love.
There is also a more common situation. The beginning of a lot of love can be described as falling in love. I feel overwhelming and infatuated, which makes people want to stop.
This kind of love is generally accompanied by strong sexual desire and attraction, but in Fromm's view, this kind of love can't last.
Because when the passion dissipates, it often leaves only a mess. Crackle-like love seems to stimulate beauty, but without the ability to love, such love is doomed to be short-lived
Maybe you will ask, the ability to love is so important, so how can we have the ability to love? Fromm has a very detailed interpretation in the book. Let's talk about it below.
The first power of love is giving.
Positive love naturally grows in the heart and is the product of freedom and voluntariness. Fromm said that love is first to give, not to take.
This kind of pay is not to give up and sacrifice, nor to exchange for gain. If you feel that you have made a great sacrifice after giving in love, it is not giving; If what you give is to get the corresponding return, it is not giving.
Real dedication makes you feel your own strength, the beauty of life, and the unspeakable happiness. By giving, you find your own vitality.
Simply put, you find yourself getting better, and you also make others better.
Positive love is that through giving, you find your own vitality, and at the same time, it inevitably inspires the vitality of the other person. Both sides are full of happiness, because they have awakened some vitality in their hearts.
Therefore, the essence of love is giving, which comes from a strong desire in the heart, without purpose and reward.
In two-way love, giving will make the other person's heart full of vitality, because giving the other person what he needs will make him happier and more fulfilling.
In addition to "giving", the ability to love also includes: caring, being responsible, respecting and understanding.
When you love someone, you will naturally care about whether it is cold and clothed, whether it rains and has an umbrella, whether you can have a full stomach, whether you can have a happy heart, whether you can have a beautiful dream and a promising future, and you will deeply care about him and miss him endlessly. This is caring.
Lin Yutang and Liao Cuifeng, one is a world-famous genius, the other is a poor housewife, but they care for each other all their lives. Tell the secret, or care about it.
As Lin Yutang said: I am like a balloon, she is a heavy pendant, and I don't know where to fly without pulling me.
Caring, like the head of that balloon falling, lets the lover always know that someone cares about himself and that he cares about this person.
Of course, care also includes the other side of love, and that is responsibility.
Fromm mentioned in his book that loving someone is not only a strong feeling, but also a decision, a judgment and a commitment. An important factor in the long-term love is the sense of responsibility. The real responsibility is not imposed by the outside world, but a completely voluntary action.
It is precisely because of this sense of responsibility for love that we will make a lifelong commitment at the sacred wedding, work hard for the future of * * * in the long marriage years, resist all kinds of temptations in life, be loyal to our lover, care about the spiritual needs of our lover and meet each other's expectations.
Of course, the sense of responsibility needs to be based on respect. Speaking of respect, let's talk about the immortal couple Jiang Yang and Qian Zhongshu.
Together for more than 60 years, they turned daily necessities into poems and distant places. But good love does not mean that there are no troubles and trivialities in life, nor does it mean that the lover has no shortcomings and deficiencies.
Qian Zhongshu can hardly take care of himself. Her left and right feet will be confused, she will accidentally knock over the ink bottle, accidentally smash the desk lamp, and even learn to strike matches to show off to her wife.
However, Jiang Yang always used the word "it doesn't matter" to preserve his imprudence and arrogance, and gave him the greatest tolerance and respect for his shortcomings.
Qian Zhongshu also respects Jiang Yang. Zhenhua Girls' School invited Jiang Yang to be the principal, but Qian Fu disagreed, but Qian Zhongshu chose to respect Jiang Yang's decision.
He will also praise his wife: her prose is better than mine, calling Jiang Yang "the most virtuous wife and the most talented woman".
It is mutual respect and tolerance that make this love deep and long-lasting, grow with each other, stand the test of years, and make it an enviable love story.
Fromm said that respect is to face up to each other and their own unique personality and strive to make each other grow and develop themselves.
When we love someone, we don't want him to change into what we want him to be, and we don't want to control and use the other person to serve us. Instead, we want him to grow and develop in his own way and become a better self.
Finally, the ability to love also includes understanding.
Only by understanding each other can we respect each other. Without understanding, everything will become blind. Understanding is profound understanding.
When we see a person angry, it is not understanding, but if we understand the reasons behind his anger and his anxiety and fear, it is understanding. Understanding will lead to understanding, and deep understanding will lead to understanding and respect, and then we can give and care.
Well, speaking of which, we know that the essence of love is that everyone, as an independent individual, looks for another independent individual in the vast sea of people in order to achieve unity and get rid of loneliness. To get love, we need to learn to give, care, be responsible, respect and understand.
This is how to love others, but on this basis, Fromm put forward a more important premise of loving others, that is: love yourself.
What is love for yourself?
Share a poem first:
Please love yourself before you love me/love yourself at the same time/if you don't love yourself/you can't love me.
This is the law of love/because/what you can't give/what you don't have.
Your love can only flow to me through you/if you are dry/I can't be nourished by you.
This is a poem "If You Love Me" by Satya, a famous American psychotherapist.
As Fromm said: Anyone who has the ability to love others must love himself.
You may think, is it the same thing to love yourself and be selfish? Fromm believes that it is not only different but also contradictory.
The core difference is that self-interested people only see themselves, but those who love themselves will still love others.
Egoistic people actually don't know how to love themselves. They lack vitality, feel empty and disappointed, and have to ask for it from the outside world to make up for the happiness they missed.
They care about their performance just to cover up their lack of ability to love.
If you love yourself, you must follow your heart and live your life in the way you like, and don't wronged yourself for others. To love yourself is to love life, strive to improve yourself, and face life confidently with kindness to the world and enthusiasm for life.
Love yourself means caring for yourself, keeping healthy and pursuing beauty;
Love yourself, even if it is as small as a dinner for yourself, a thorough fitness and a trip to leave immediately, is to accept yourself in the dribs and drabs of life and live a happy life.
Love is the overflow and sharing of rich souls. Self-happiness and happiness are the prerequisites for us to love others and the whole world.
Only those who have love in their hearts have the ability to love.
Just like a mother who is overly worried and self-sacrificing, no matter how good she is to her children, she can't bring them a truly healthy and happy life.
Loving others because you don't know how to love yourself is closely related to your family background.
Fromm analyzed from the beginning of human life.
After we are born, mother will meet all our needs unconditionally. Because of mom, we will form the first experience: I am loved.
Because maternal love is unconditional, it is a kind of love that we are born with. This unconditional love has created our initial sense of security and is also the deepest desire of each of us.
Fathers are different. In Fromm's theory, fatherly love is conditional, and we should strive to get fatherly love. Father brought us into this world and learned to obey the order of this world.
Mature maternal love will not stop the growth of children, but hope that children will eventually get rid of themselves and achieve independence.
Mature fatherly love makes children more and more confident in their own strength and ability.
When a person is mature enough, he will become his mother and father. On the one hand, he is full of love and loves the world. On the one hand, I have maintained my independence and have the ability to control my life.
Both are indispensable.
Being born in a family will profoundly affect how a person establishes contact with the world, and it is also related to whether a person can learn to love himself and then have the ability to love others.
However, we must believe that the negativity of family background can not determine everything. When we realize the negative side of Native House, we can still make up and break through, and try to heal our childhood.
Fromm himself gained the ability of love in the process of healing his childhood.
Fromm's father is a grumpy man, full of anxiety about his son's growth; Mothers often have unrealistic expectations for their sons and cling to them.
Fromm had a strong sense of insecurity and loneliness in his childhood. He thinks that imperfect fatherly love and maternal love limit his ability to love.
Therefore, he deliberately violated the Jewish dietary regulations and gave up his father's religion and fatherly love. The separation from his father's love allows him to analyze his social psychology freely and get rid of anxiety.
After that, he went through a long and painful process to get rid of maternal love. To some extent, he lived in his mother's expectation for a long time, which made him unable to accept his failure in love.
It was not until his fourth lover died of illness that he accepted his limitations and failures in great sadness.
It was then that he gained new courage to love. He loves life more and the world more.
He fell in love with his last wife for 27 years, maintained a creative and positive relationship, and integrated his love theory with practice.
As Fromm said, to solve the problem of love, we need the courage to endure disappointment and patience when we are hit.
Yes, love needs learning and a complicated and painful process, but this process is the only way for everyone.
The theory of love finally points to practice. Fromm also gave the answer about how to practice love.
Fromm pointed out that love is a kind of ability, which can only be improved in practice.
So, is there a secret? Is there a shortcut? number
However, since love is an art, there must be steps and methods.
Fromm provided us with the basic steps, telling us that if we want to get the final step, we have to rely on everyone to practice.
Fromm put forward that the practice of love has three steps. The first step is discipline. The second is concentration; The third is patience.
Discipline sounds like a serious word, but it is very important for love.
As I said before, the premise of having the ability to love is to love yourself, and only by loving yourself can we love others and the world.
You can't love yourself without discipline. As Fromm said, without discipline, life will be fragmented and chaotic.
Under such circumstances, it is difficult for people to love themselves, and they still live in a daze, let alone love others.
How to train discipline?
That is to make discipline a manifestation of self-will, find it a pleasure, and gradually get used to this attitude towards life. Once you give up, you will feel uncomfortable.
For example, Haruki Murakami gets up at 5 o'clock every morning, goes to bed before 10 at night, writes for an hour every day, runs 10 kilometers, and can't be shaken for 40 years.
But when it comes to perseverance, he doesn't emphasize the so-called strong will, but regards running as an attitude towards life, a habit, and something that tickles if you don't do it.
The key to self-discipline is to form a good attitude towards life and good living habits, which is an intuitive embodiment of loving life.
The second important step is to concentrate.
Concentration also means concentration. In modern society, concentration is more difficult than discipline. People's lifestyles are decentralized and decentralized. People often do many things at the same time: reading, talking, watching TV, smoking and playing mobile phones.
The hardest thing to do is being alone.
Fromm pointed out that if you want to gain concentration, you must first learn to be alone, which is an important condition for learning to love.
You can close your eyes, make your eyes appear white, observe your breathing, strengthen your feelings, and eliminate all pictures and thoughts that interfere with you. Practice for 20 minutes every morning and evening.
This practice allows us to focus on the present, face ourselves and find ourselves. Only when we calm down can we stay awake.
We can also concentrate on reflection. If you have distractions in your heart, try to ask yourself, what happened? Why are you afraid? Why are you depressed?
Only when we concentrate on listening to ourselves can we make a sober and correct decision.
Learning to concentrate on one thing, learning to talk to people, has a positive effect on learning to love. If a person can't concentrate on things, he is likely to be unable to concentrate and awake in love.
The third step is patience.
Modern people pursue efficiency and think that everything is as fast as possible. Love has also become a fast-moving consumer goods, paying attention to quick decisions.
We seem to be in a wandering world, people meet each other, but we don't have the patience to see ourselves, so we miss it.
Sometimes, we think that we are in love, get together in a hurry, eat, watch movies and send flowers, but it is difficult to patiently go deep into each other's hearts and get deep understanding and value confirmation, so we can't have spiritual contact.
Many times, because of impatience, I am eager to achieve success, but in the face of love, I often lose.
Failure brings a kind of anxiety, shakes the consciousness of love and belief, and has no patience to actively seek and experience.
To practice patience, we should try to slow down the pace of love, increase the density of love, and get to know each other.
Even if you fail, don't escape, find the reason and continue to improve your ability to love. You know, love guru Fromm has also experienced many failed loves.
Well, this is the whole essence of The Art of Love.
Let's review it.
First of all, we make it clear that love is a need for human beings to realize the combination of people for their inherent loneliness.
Love is an art, which requires us to study all our lives, gain the ability to love, and learn to pay, care, be responsible, respect and understand in love.
Then, we talked about an important premise of loving others, that is, loving yourself. When we learn to love ourselves, we must love life and the world.
People who don't love themselves are mostly influenced by their family background. Improper maternal love or fatherly love will affect our ability to love.
However, we can try to cure childhood and break through the shortcomings brought by childhood.
Finally, we return to the practice of love. In order to harvest a beautiful and mature love in the sea of people, we must put it into practice. Fromm put forward three basic steps: discipline, concentration and patience. Have you learned?
Back to the original confusion, why love is getting harder and harder.
In fact, we can ask ourselves a question: Do you have a need for love in your heart? Or have other demands surpassed and overshadowed this demand?
You don't need to answer in a hurry. Close your eyes and think about it.
May this book awaken everyone's strong desire and firm belief in love.